Does Access to Family Planning Services Improve Women's Welfare? Evidence on Dowries and Intra-
Household Bargaining in Bangladesh Christina Peters
October 2007

ABSTRACT

This paper demonstrates how the availability of family planning and maternal and child health
services alters the structure of intra-household bargaining. Despite the intention of many family
planning programs to empower women through fertility control, I observe that when women
obtain access to services only through marriage, there can be offsetting welfare changes in their
bargaining power and in the dowries they are required to pay their husbands. To understand
these effects, I develop a model that allows for the possibility of household adjustments to
external shocks to occur along two margins simultaneously— both before marriage through a
dowry payment as well as within marriage through a shift in the bargaining weights. I then
examine the marriage market effects of a quasi-randomized family planning program in rural
Bangladesh using 1996 cross-sectional data on nearly 4,500 households. I find that women pay
14 percent higher dowries in order to obtain husbands with access to the program, and this result
is confirmed in a difference-in-differences specification. Moreover, compared to women without
program access, women in the treatment area are 33 percent less likely to be able to make large
purchases without permission from their husbands or another household member. The fact that I
observe adjustments both before and within marriage suggests that marital contracts in Matlab
occur in a setting of limited commitment.